I agree totally with #1, the root system is very cool. The diglossia has two sides to it, on the one hand it makes it harder to structure learning because the b

I agree totally with #1, the root system is very cool. The diglossia has two sides to it, on the one hand it makes it harder to structure learning because the basic phrases that are the bread and butter of every other language learning program are usually expressed only in the dialects and may not even have agreed upon spelling in the written language. On the other hand, if you just want to speak, you can spend relatively little time on grammatical features like the dual, because many spoken dialects barely use them. The real barrier for me though has been that Arabic (like Hebrew) is written without the short vowels in all text except for children's books and religious texts. This means that if you don't know a word, you can't pronounce it properly.